Short-term FAA deal passes, but parties still differ on policy

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Delta unions supported a now-overturned ruling that made it easier for airline employees to organize.

WASHINGTON — The Senate procedurally approved a bill Friday morning that will reopen parts of the Federal Aviation Administration after a two week partial shutdown that left, by some estimates, up to 70,000 workers off the job, though few in Minnesota.

Both Minnesota senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, came out in favor of the plan Thursday, which saw the Senate pass a House bill authorizing the FAA through September and allowing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to waive some of its controversial provisions.

Most of the 70,000 employees said to be out of work are construction workers on projects that have stopped because FAA staffers who authorize their payments have been furloughed. In Minnesota, a slow construction season meant less damage done than elsewhere in the country, though some of the larger airports in the state warned that a longer shutdown could curtail or dramatically delay projects.

The most noteworthy of those is a $65 million terminal project at Duluth International Airport. Work on the external structure is ongoing and unaffected by the shutdown, but the airport hopes to bid out internal work before the fall, said Brian Grefe, the director of operations at Duluth International.

Before they can do that, however, the FAA has to sign off on the plans, and the personnel to complete that task are considered nonessential and furloughed during the shutdown.

Duluth scheduleIf the shutdown were to have dragged on too long, the new terminal project could have been delayed by up to a year — before Duluth can open the new terminal, the old terminal has to come down, and planes will be ground boarded instead of using a gate. Given the frigid Duluth winters, that can only happen during the warmer months.

So there really is only about an eight-month window where such a project can take place, Grefe said. If the FAA were to have stayed shut down too far into the fall and not have been able to approve the project quickly enough, the construction timeline could have been pushed back into the winter months when construction is not possible, thus delaying the whole project.

But even this week, Grefe said, it was too early to fret about such an occurrence.

“We’re not in complete panic mode yet, but we are concerned,” he said Wednesday.

Other Minnesota airports were even less affected. Rochester International is planning a fall electrical project that will be eligible for FAA grants, but Kurt Claussen, the deputy airport director, said it was so small they could have gone forward, shutdown or not.

And Minneapolis-St. Paul International plans to bid out two construction projects in November, but an airport spokesman said it isn’t known how, if at all, the shutdown will affect how long it takes the FAA to approve projects that are still months away.

LaHood warned Thursday that as workers return to a backlog of requests, there could still be delays.

“The longer these people are off work, the more delayed they’re going to be doing their job when they get back,” he said. “There will be delays.”

FAA politicsCongress has not passed a long-term extension of the FAA’s spending authority for four years, relying otherwise on 21 short-term extensions to keep it open. The extension the Senate approved Friday will keep the FAA open through September.

The current debate over a long-term plan focuses on two main issues: funding for subsidies to regional airports and labor practice provisions.

Essential Air Service is a program through which the federal government subsidizes airlines operating to small regional airports throughout the country, including to three in Minnesota. The House of Representatives voted in April the end the plan altogether, while the Senate has sought to preserve it.

The short-term authorization the House passed would have ended those subsidies for airports in Montana, West Virginia and Nevada, states home to top Democratic lawmakers who contended the cuts were more political than anything.

After the short-term extension is signed into law, LaHood will issue waivers continuing those subsidies until a final deal can be reached. Both chambers have agreed on cuts to at least 16 small regional airports (none in Minnesota) in a final deal.

Delta labor disputePerhaps a larger dispute is over language in the House bill that would overrule a National Mediation Board ruling that would have made it easier for airline employees to organize. Delta Airlines, whose flight attendants alleged interference from the company during their bid to unionize last November, has opposed the ruling, which would require only a majority of voting employees to approve a union, not a majority of all employees.

The House long-term authorization would overturn that ruling. And while Republicans on the House committee note that there are no labor provisions in the short-term extension, Democrats have said it’s the largest sticking point of the overall measure.

“You cannot have in an FAA bill…a union contact with a private company,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said Thursday. “It doesn’t belong in the bill.”

“This issue has nothing to do with Essential Air Service,” said Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, whose state has a few EAS airports that would lose their subsidies. “It has everything to do with a labor dispute between airlines and the American worker.”

LaHood said it’s Congress’s duty to resolve the matter in a final FAA deal.

“That’s something that Congress should work out. If they don’t like language in a bill, work it out, like you do a lot of other things round here,” he said, adding that the continued use of short-term extensions is not a good strategy for running the FAA.

“This is not the way to run the best and the safest aviation system in the world.”

Delta has spent $2.8 million on lobbying this year, according to disclosure forms, and has hired the talents of the powerful Breaux Lott Leadership Group. That group, lead by former Democratic (John Breaux) and Republican (Trent Lott) senators, also lobbies for the Air Transport Association, a trade group of the airline industry.

ATA sued the National Mediation Board after it released the new unionization guidelines and lost. Delta, as the story notes, is one of the few major American airlines that is not unionized, and it began lobbying this year just as the House began considering the FAA bill.

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Comments (3)

The National Mediation Board doesn’t have the authority to re-write labor law. That’s the role of congress. Requiring only a majority of voting employees to approve a union, and not a majority of all employees, is a violation of federal law.

So if the FAA wants to continue to operate, perhaps they should obey the law.

The arti9cle is a more thorough report than many I’ve seen, but a few things still need to be clarified:

Who put the House Republicans up to insisting on changing the NMB election rules? Delta CEO Richard Anderson, because it shields Delta from competitors and Delta made changes earlier this year — selling off regional subsidiaries and laying off professionals, pilots and flight attendants — that could increase the chance of unions winning representation or forcing wage hikes under the current NMB election rules.

Franken and Klobuchar didn’t come out in favor of the deal, I believe they held their noses and voted for it because both safety and economic recovery werew threatened by the FAA shut-down.

So it sounds like the FAA was partly shut down and is threatened with total shutdown because Delta is scared a majority of its employees want a union. Maybe instead of coping like having employees work for free and charging airline tickets on their personal credit cards, the Democrats should give the Republicans want they seem to want and shut down the whole system. See how Delta likes that.

Best yet is if the GOP congressmen could be out of town when the airlines should down. That would be delicious irony. Meanwhile, if I fly, I’m avoiding Delta.